The Right to Abortion: A Comparative Critical Examination of the Legal Position in India and America

Abortion Rights is one of the most complex and intensely debated socio-legal issues of today’s world. The complexities concerning the right to abortion is a topic which has been extensively discussed in various jurisdictions and has had disparate outcomes in different jurisdictions. This paper shall focus on the abortion from a Fundamental Rights perspective to understand the jurisprudential development in the USA and India. It shall also examine the history and evolution of abortion rights in India over the years and extend of the influence of American jurisprudence on India’s abortion laws. The author shall endeavour to examine the abortion dilemma both from the right of the mother to choose as well as from the foetus’s right to life through a detailed analysis of the development of constitutional adjudication in both these nations. The author shall analyse conflicting arguments and rely upon judicial decisions to arrive a balanced conclusion on the same. The paper shall examine the supreme court’s abortion jurisprudence over the years to understand the present and the future of abortion rights in India and America.